What is Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP)?
Search Networking, Thursday, February 20th, 2025
Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) is an application-layer protocol for monitoring and managing network devices on a local area network or wide area network.
SNMP provides network devices, such as routers, servers and printers, with a common language for sharing information with a network management system (NMS).
SNMP's client-server architecture has four components:
- An SNMP agent, which acts as the server.
- Managed network nodes, which are the devices and services on which the agents run.
- An SNMP manager, which acts as the client.
- A management information base (MIB), which acts as the server's database.
When the SNMP manager asks the agent a question, the agent uses the MIB to supply the answer.